Unbeaten British welterweight Tom Breese leads a list of three prospects E. Spencer Kyte thinks you should be keeping your eye on this weekend as the UFC returns to the O2 Arena in London.

Every event features a handful of fighters that fly under the radar – competitors that have only had a couple fights in the organization, been stuck on the prelims or haven’t yet registered their breakthrough performance that makes a wider audience sit up and take notice. In some ways, these are the fighters you should be paying attention to more because while everyone is acutely aware of what the headliners bring to the table, the next wave of champions and contenders are going to come from this collection of competitors that are waiting for their chance to make their mark and this is your chance to get familiar with them before the bandwagon starts filling up.

Enter Futures Watch, a new series that will shine a light on the lesser-known or sometimes forgotten fighters competing on a given card with an eye towards identifying the athletes that could find themselves in the mix somewhere down the line.

Here’s a look the up-and-comers to keep tabs on competing this weekend in London.

As I said on this week’s edition of the Keyboard Kimura Podcast, I legitimately believe the 24-year-old Birmingham native has the potential to develop into one of the fighters that inherits Michael Bisping’s place as a legitimate draw and household name for fight fans in the United Kingdom and Europe over the next few years because he’s an obvious blue chip talent, comes from a great camp and I don’t see any real reasons why Breese can’t develop into a championship contender in the welterweight division.

Standing 6’3”, he has tremendous size for the division and showed in his destruction of Cathal Pendred that he understands how to use his length to work from the outside. That fight also showed that despite being heralded as a submission specialist upon his arrival to the UFC, Breese has clean, technical striking with enough jam to jack you up on the feet too.

Saturday’s fight with Nakamura feels like a showcase opportunity for the unbeaten up-and-comer and it absolutely should be – Breese is the kind of bright prospect that needs to be put in the spotlight and given every chance to shine going forward. The road will only get tougher after this, but coming off a pair of first-round stoppage wins, giving the British upstart a chance to flourish on home soil is the right call and the Tristar Gym trainee should make the most of it.

One of the breakout fighters of 2015, Amirkhani kicked in the door with an eight-second TKO win over Andy Ogle in his debut, then showed up to the press conference rocking a purple velvet blazer and charming the socks off everyone in attendance (or watching from home on UFC Fight Pass). For his sophomore effort, he choked out Masio Fullen and then delivered a heartfelt message to his mother, who was watching in the stands.

From the promotional side of things, Amirkhani just gets it – he’s engaging and charismatic, letting you in just enough to like him, but also keeping things a little close to the vest so you want to keep watching and finding out more. From a performance standpoint, he’s looked great through two appearances, but Saturday’s contest feels like the one where everyone will get a better read on where “Mr. Finland” actually stands in the division.

Amirkhani asked for Wilkinson after the former TUF contestant stopped Niklas Backstrom in 79 seconds in October 2014. Now more than a year later – and with Amirkhani no longer training alongside Backstrom at Allstars in Stockholm – he’s getting his wish. The Brit is tough as nails and step up from Fullen, so this should be Amirkhani’s litmus test. Of course, the 27-year-old who now trains at SBG Ireland in Dublin is the only man to beat Tom Duquesnoy to date and “Fire Kid” is arguably the top prospect in the sport right now, so maybe that should tell us how much upside Amirkhani really has going forward. Either way, Saturday should be fun because these two don’t particularly care for each other and have a penchant for finishing fights quickly, so we should get a barnburner for as long as it lasts.

There were a lot of impressive debuts last year in the UFC, but one of the more underrated (or maybe under-appreciated) first-time efforts belonged to Allen, who accepted his fight with Alan Omer about a week before the bout, jumped on a plane to Berlin and pulled off a come-from-behind submission win in the third round to push his record to 10-1.

Now the 22-year-old has a full camp (at Tristar) behind him and a date with Meza on Saturday’s UFC London fight card and he’s eager to deliver a better performance than the one he put forth in his debut.It was great hearing him say that (we spoke for UFC.com last week; story will be up later this week) because he had every reason to pat himself on the back and say, “Under the circumstances, that was pretty rad,” but instead, he’s chomping at the bit to get back in there and improve on his effort. That he uprooted and moved to Montreal for the last four months is a huge positive as well and if all goes as planned, Allen will have people talking about him as one to watch in the 145-pound ranks in the future, as they should.

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